Local News

Longmont gardener having his time in the sun

Dan Nelson's organic garden is bringing beauty and joy, but alas, come fall it must go

By Tony Kindelspire, Times-Call staff writer

Posted:
06/29/2014 10:00:00 AM MDT

Updated:
06/30/2014 10:36:52 AM MDT

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Times-Call's series Take Two revisits people we have written about in the past year. Take Two stories will run on Mondays.

It's not exactly a farmer's market, but Dan Nelson says people are welcome to come by and pick his organic, fresh veggies.

Nelson is the impromptu gardener that decided to take a formerly weed-riddled patch of ground on a busy Longmont corner and turn it into his own personal garden. The problem was, that was city property and the right-of-way belongs to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

But summer's here and the small garden he planted in April is in full bloom.

The city backed off its original demand that he remove the garden immediately and instead allowed his sister to pull a "use of public purpose places permit" for the spot — something that would normally not be done spur of the moment. The caveat is that by the end of October, the garden must be gone.

"My kids play here all the time, and he actually said we could take whatever we want," said Hilary Dunford, who lives nearby and had stopped by the garden Friday morning with a couple of tykes. "He said the kale is overgrown."

"I've got a lot of kale," said Nelson, 31. "Actually I've got two varieties of kale."

Nelson installed four 4-by-8-foot raised beds when he built the garden. Kale, strawberries, raspberries and other veggies fill three of the boxes while the fourth has been turned into a construction zone complete with Tonka toy equipment.

"When these guys showed up" — Nelson said, pointing to the real construction equipment nearby that's started on the Quail Campus — "they had four trucks and a semi, so I just kind of copied them one night."

He also took inspiration from the current museum exhibit showing down the street.

"I don't know if people know it, but the museum has this 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' exhibit. So we went to that — I took my nephews," Nelson said. "We went there and saw that exhibit and I thought it was really cool, so that night I went out and got this stuff."

"This" being a Thomas the Tank Engine battery powered train, rumbling through a small neighborhood marked with signs reading "work hard," "grow," "be nice," and a city limits sign reading "Strongmont: pop. Awesome."

He's put a bunch of other whimsical touches in: some rocks painted up to look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a "Hulkamania" headband with accompanying pink boa.

Dan Nelson waters his garden at the northeast corner of Main Street and Quail Road in Longmont on Friday. For a video and photo gallery, go to www.timescall.com. (Cliff Grassmick / Daily Camera)

The hours Nelson has put into the neatly appointed garden is obvious. Since getting the train he has to come over three times a day from his nearby Quail Ridge home to change the batteries. And watering the plants and flowers means multiple trips back and forth from his house carrying five-gallon buckets of water.

But to see people like Dunford come by with a couple of kids that immediately start playing with the toys and the trucks — that makes it worth it, Nelson said.

"Just how good it feels to give back," he said. "Just to do stuff because it feels good to you."

He said he's not really doing it for any special cause, but he does mention more than once that he believes it's a good example of urban agriculture, and of how city property can be put to good use growing organic food.

"I noticed when I started digging up the soil here — I could tell it was really fertile soil. Because of the color and stuff," Nelson said. "I haven't sprayed pesticides on anything. I've just been really lucky with the ladybugs and the butterflies."

And he said he finds it frustrating when he walks over in the morning and finds city sprinklers watering the entire strip of land along Quail Road, from his garden all the way back to the museum's driveway. That's a stretch, he points out, with very little grass and a lot of weeds.

"The fact is we can use public land to grow healthy, organic food," Nelson said. "Raspberries and blueberries — they're perennials and they're super easy."

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